US drilling rig count gains 9, now 411

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count, 411 for the week ending March 19, was up by nine from the week ending March 12 and down 361 from a count of 772 a year ago.

When the count bottomed out at 244 in mid-August last year, it was not just the low for 2020, but the lowest the count has been since the Houston based oilfield services company began issuing weekly U.S. numbers in 1944.

Prior to 2020, the low was 404 rigs in May 2016. The count peaked at 4,530 in 1981.

The count was in the low 790s at the beginning of 2020, where it remained through mid-March, when it began to fall, dropping below what had been the historic low in early May with a count of 374 and continuing to drop through the third week of August when it gained back 10 rigs.

The March 19 count includes 318 rigs targeting oil, up nine from the previous week and down 346 from 664 a year ago, 92 rigs targeting gas, unchanged from the previous week but down 14 from 106 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, unchanged from the previous week and down one from a year ago.

Fourteen of the holes reported March 19 were directional, 372 were horizontal and 25 were vertical.

Alaska unchanged from previous week

Louisiana (47) was up by two rigs and North Dakota (13) was up by one rig.

Texas (202), which has the most active rigs in the country, was down by one rig from the previous week.

Rig counts in the remaining states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (3), California (7), Colorado (8), Ohio (9), Oklahoma (16), Pennsylvania (18), Utah (3), West Virginia (12) and Wyoming (5).

Baker Hughes shows Alaska with three rigs active March 19, unchanged from the previous week and down by seven from a year ago, when the state’s count stood at 10.

The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by four from the previous week at 216, but down by 189 from a count of 405 a year ago.

- KRISTEN NELSON